In terms of the “necessity” of a creator – don’t forget when building your view of the universe, and life itself that you and all life are not composed of matter alone, nor was matter, by itself, used to build the proteins that your whole body is made of – this took another aspect of reality entirely: information. You and all life are not made from matter – but composed in matter via the use of information – the matter is just a medium through which that information is expressed. Importantly, information can exist INDEPENDENT of space-time itself.
This is a very important point to consider, perhaps the MOST important point of all, when considering how life began, and perhaps by proxy, “why” the universe exists in the first place.
Consider the fact that gene expression occurs because some very complex proteins for some reason continue the process of producing other complex proteins, even replicating their own complex proteins through a vast and incredibly complex system of actors and actions – and while this itself is astonishing, even more astonishing is that the proteins themselves cannot produce proteins without instructions (a.k.a. information).
When scientists discovered that all life is built from the information contained in our genes, and that the information itself does nothing by itself, but is just a repository of information, not only did we begin to understand that life was FAR more complex than anyone had ever imagined, we also discovered that in fact a whole new dimension of reality had been staring us in the face all along: INFORMATION. There is SPACE, then there’s TIME, and now we living in the “information age” know, there is also INFORMATION.
Without information there could be no living things, i.e. no life could exist. Therefore, information is a fundamental building block of all life. In fact, it is the FOUNDATION. Yet, information is not matter, and no matter has ever “made” information, without some other information already being there. Information is not energy. Information is not time. Information is something altogether different. Information is not a “thing”, and yet it clearly is “some thing”. So, since life as we know it cannot exist without information, and we know information is NOT space-time, this raises some very interesting questions about the origin of life in the universe.
No matter where or when “life” first happened, it required information. VERY specific information. Where did this information come from? Can you find any example of information which did not come from…a human mind? The words you are reading right now are conveying information to you, but they themselves are not information. The words are just pixels on a screen, or ink on a paper, etc. Information clearly “comes” from somewhere, and is clearly dependent upon…an originator of that information – in the case of these words you’re reading now, me, the author.
In fact, all the information in the known universe comes from one of two places: human minds, and DNA. This fact may be easily missed in terms of it’s implications! Try to find ANY other source of information – you cannot – all known information either comes from a human mind, or from DNA, the DNA in every cell of every living organism, whether single-celled or multi-cellular. Now…since we clearly did not put the information found in DNA there ourselves, and matter never produces information without information already being there to begin with, and since information must come from somewhere…it becomes clear that the EFFECT information has upon matter is not itself the CAUSE of the information, and so something else is required to explain how the information got there in the first place.
Before we humans ever existed, the information used to build proteins existed. How can we reconcile the fact that information is used to direct gene expression, which produces proteins, and yet it takes proteins to make other proteins, and information to guide the process in the first place? Can a factory that produces cars build itself? Can it assemble from matter spontaneously and begin building cars without someone directing the process? Even if an automated self-assembling car factory COULD be automatically assembled and start producing cars somewhere, it would still require the information for HOW to do so in order to accomplish the feat.
This means the information had to come FIRST. Origins…the origin of information, THAT is the question we ultimately must answer then: where did the original information originate from?
When I research a new concept, and want to truly understand that concept, I am involved in the process of assimilating new information into my personal knowledge-base. The first thing I’ll try to do is seek the SOURCE of the information I am assimilating, so I can begin my understanding of the new concept on what I feel is reliably solid conceptual ground, by virtue of it being built upon the foundation of the origin of the information which describes the concept. In other words, I like to try to go right to the source of things, in order to better understand them, and form opinions about them.
Molecular biologists have been studying DNA and the incredibly vast complexities of cellular machinery for the better part of a century now, and yet for all of our increasing understanding of HOW life works, nobody has even a clue as to what the SOURCE of the information that drives it all is.
That is why this is a very important question, perhaps the MOST important question to ask yourself when considering how life began, and perhaps why the universe even exists in the first place – where did the information come from? If information is not space-time, and can exist INDEPENDENT of the universe, and if we humans are the only known source of all information EXCEPT the information responsible for life itself…then what is the SOURCE of that “other” information? Aye…THAT is the question 🙂